FOOTNOTES

THE BAREFOOT BRAINSTORMING BLOG

Insights worth sharing + your daily aha moments.

Delivering an epic keynote is not as easy as it looks. If you want to get to Ted or TEDx quality here are the must haves. Know Your Purpose: If you’re going to hold an audience’s attention you MUST fully understand your purpose… your calling… what gets YOU out of bed in the morning. If you don’t, then you will be delivering a speech. People don’t want to hear a speech. If you know your purpose, you can speak from the heart with no notes. Be Passionate: Your energy, and your passion are contagious! People are sitting in the audience because […]

It’s Movember, and it’s also a few weeks before the holiday season kicks in to high gear… so my focus turns to a multitude of Not for Profit organizations. Over the years, I have had the privilege of doing some brainstorming sessions with all different kinds of charities. ‘Charitable Brainstorming’ is my absolute favourite kind of work for so many reasons. The Not for Profit space is becoming increasingly crowded while our disposable income is shrinking quickly. In fact when it comes to charitable giving, North Americans are giving less than they did 10 years ago! The challenge of creating […]

Halloween is one of my favourite times of the year! It’s also one of my absolute favourite creative exercises to use in a brainstorming session. A lot has been written about solving a problem or coming up with a new idea by changing your perspective. I agree that it is a powerful approach to creative problem solving. I have attended sessions where you are asked to look at a challenge from the perspective of a famous person, like a movie star, prime minister, or an author. In theory this sounds like a great approach, except that I don’t know how […]

The short answer is NEVER! As soon as you start to cut corners during brainstorming to save time, the process falls apart. You’ll soon be back to square one, staring at each other across the boardroom table asking if anyone has an idea! From time to time I have had clients ask me to do a ‘light’ version of the process. Bottom line, there is no ‘light’ version that works — certainly not one that generates the quantity and quality of ideas that are worthy of people’s time. I can think of two stories I would love to share with […]

One of the main reasons people say they love to attend conferences is for the ability to network. Yet, when I speak at conferences, I notice that what is happening is exactly the opposite of networking. People walk around with their herd, their tribe—the people they already know. When they go into a breakout room, they save seats at their table for their tribe members, and those seats are directly beside each other. When I speak at a conference, one of the first things I do is to ask people to go and sit beside someone they don’t know and […]